Monday, 31 August 2015

Is David Cameron Actively Seeking to Destroy the Lords?

Quote: "Yesterday’s new peerage appointments attracted almost universal
criticism for further adding to the inexorable growth in size of the
House of Lords under David Cameron. But could the gradual erosion of the
Lords’ reputation actually benefit the government by weakening
parliament? Might it even be a deliberate plan? And – given that the
Prime Minister holds all the cards – what can be done about it? Meg Russell comments.
This post has an eye-catching title, but it isn’t a joke – my
question is deadly serious. David Cameron’s list of 45 new appointments
to the Lords, announced this week, has attracted predictable wails of
outrage – from the media, from opposition parties , and indeed from myself. His Lords appointments in the last five years have been completely disproportionate. As I demonstrated in a report
earlier this year, he has created new peers at a faster rate than any
other Prime Minister since life peerages began in 1958. Although growth
in the size of the chamber has always been a problem, since 2010 it has
escalated to new proportions. As is clear from my well-rehearsed graph,
updated for this week’s appointments, the upward trajectory increased
sharply from 2010. In the 11 years of Labour government from 1999-2010
the chamber grew by 40-70 members (depending how you measure it); in the
five short years since Cameron took office, it has grown by two to
three times as much.

Note:
‘Actual eligible membership’ includes those on leave of absence and
otherwise temporarily excluded from the chamber, all of whom could
potentially return. Source: House of Lords Information Office figures
from January each year, updated with 2015 appointments.

Cameron’s latest list of appointments was long anticipated. A few weeks ago, the Prime Minister appeared to conjure up a new convention, that the Lords should be rebalanced to reflect the politics of the Commons – I pointed out that this was a non-convention, and in an interview on the Today Programme
(1hr 15min) explained why it would also be a terrible idea. For the
Lords to reflect the Commons politically would make it a far less
effective institution. It is precisely because no government since 1999
has had a Lords majority, and ministers have had to justify their
policies there on the basis of argument, rather than simply partisan
loyalty, that the Upper House has done a good job of holding government
to account. The Blair and Brown governments had to navigate policy and
negotiate with the Lords, in a chamber where the Conservatives remained
the largest party for nine years. It is precisely its ‘no overall
control’ character – with the balance of power held by Liberal Democrats
and Crossbench independents – which revived the previously moribund Lords post-1999, and in doing so both strengthened parliament and led to better government.
It was widely anticipated that Cameron wanted to use these new
appointments to strengthen the Conservatives’ position in the Lords, in
line with his comment above. But this is not actually what he has done.
His list of 45 new appointees
includes 26 Conservatives, 11 Lib Dems and eight Labour nominees –
giving him an increased advantage of just seven. It seems quite
inexplicable that he would appoint so many Liberal Democrats, given that
party’s collapse in the national vote share and in Commons seats, and
that before this week it already had 101 seats in the Lords (compared to
eight MPs). This makes even less sense when you consider that new
Liberal Democrat peers will largely use their positions to vote against
the government. This week’s appointments were packaged as ‘resignation
honours’, and hence include various former MPs. But several of the
Liberal Democrat nominees have never been MPs at all, so why appoint
them? In a report
supported by numerous senior cross-party figures four years ago I
argued that dissolution honours lists were a luxury that could no longer
be afforded given the Lords’ growing size. But while Cameron might have
felt that he had an obligation, in line with past precedent, to senior
retiring figures like William Hague, any such obligation extends to
barely a handful on this list. So why not simply appoint seven
Conservatives and no others? Or perhaps ten Conservatives, two Labour
nominees and one Liberal Democrat? The net outcome in terms of Lords
votes would have been the same, and the media outrage could have been
avoided.
Given how strange this seems, is it possible that the media outrage
is actually part of the strategy? Next week we will publish new research
showing definitively that media coverage of the Lords has grown
increasingly negative since Cameron became Prime Minister. Such coverage
reflects badly on him, but the primary damage done is to the reputation
of the Lords. And if the Lords’ reputation is damaged, this weakens its
ability to credibly challenge the government. The chamber’s ballooning
size is patently becoming absurd, as the newspapers frequently remind us.
The 101 Liberal Democrats (40 of them appointed by Cameron himself, by
the way) already looked disproportionate. This week’s appointments
simply add to the absurdity. The Prime Minister may take a short-term
media ‘hit’, but the long-term damage will be to the Lords.
This may sound like an over-elaborate conspiracy theory. That it
should be a Conservative Prime Minister, of all things, who would seek
to damage the Lords is counterintuitive. But the latest round of
appointments (not to mention previous ones) is puzzling, until
considered in this light. And these are not simply isolated musings. I
have spoken to journalists who claim to have been told by senior
Conservative sources that there is indeed a deliberate strategy to
undermine the Lords. Such suggestions have started to creep into the newspapers
(para 21). Other events in recent years have also contributed to an
undermining of the chamber’s reputation. It is notable that the House of Lords Appointments Commission,
responsible for proposing expert independent peers, has been invited to
make only eight nominations since 2010 – compared to the 31 in the
period 2005-10 (in the context of a far smaller total number of peerage
appointments). The presence of independent members and experts are among
the most popular features
of the Lords with the public, and it has previously been widely agreed
that Crossbenchers should be maintained at 20%. Instead, this group is
being undermined.
Whether by accident or design, David Cameron as Prime Minister is
clearly failing in his constitutional duty to appoint responsibly to the
Lords, and to protect and maintain the reputation of parliament. No
modern Prime Minister has made peerage appointments with this degree of
recklessness. There is enormous concern inside the Lords itself about
the situation, and there are rumours that this concern is shared in
Whitehall as well. But until something is done to constrain his powers,
the Prime Minister maintains complete control over the system – in terms
of how many peers are appointed, when, and with what party balance. If
such powers are abused this becomes extremely serious, given the lack of
external constraint – and presents others in the system with a major
constitutional challenge. Some may argue that the answer is ‘big’
reform: most obviously the introduction of election. Indeed for some the
reaction to my headline could well be “destruction of the Lords:
hooray!” But this all depends on what comes in its place. A move to
election would require action by government, and this government clearly
has absolutely no intention to bring forward a bill. So the risk is
instead descent towards a moribund and discredited institution, as
existed in the 1950s, with ever weaker ability to hold the government to
account. Until some bigger Lords reform happens, the priority must be
to maintain the integrity of parliament, and its capacity properly to do
its job.
So what can be done? This is a serious crisis for the Lords, and
demands serious action. The Lord Speaker has apparently convened a
cross-party working group to come up with proposals by October – which
could be crucial. The House of Lords Constitution Committee could also
step in and express a view. There are options for motions, standing
order changes and private members’ bills – to cap the size of the
chamber, the numbers coming in, the proportion of party peers against
independents, and even completely to overhaul the appointments process.
One of the obstacles to second chamber reform – not only in the UK, but around the world
– is that it is not in government’s self-interest to strengthen
parliament. But when the driver of the bus seems intent on sending it
careering out of control and heading for a cliff, there comes a point
when the passengers must seize the wheel. In other words, parliament
itself now urgently needs to act. The Lords should do so with
determination and force – if it is not to simply sit by as a spectator,
observing its own destruction." Go to: http://constitution-unit.com/2015/08/28/is-david-cameron-actually-seeking-to-destroy-the-lords/

Arafel Comment: You are missing the obvious too, he (not unreasonably), has rewarded
those Liberal buddies with a Golden Handshake, he’s bought Lockean
Neo-Conism into The Lords whilst also trying to undermine its
traditional “liberal” consensus..Thank you for your analysis..it makes
sense..such closet fascists have long experience of the sting in Maam's
“tale”! Is it any wonder they are coming-out now (“oooops did I say
something wrong?”), …………"